ARAB TIMES, MONDAY, MAY 22, 2017
NEWS/FEATURES
21
Film
Adorable cast
Haynes’ film quite
a cinematic feast
CANNES, France, May 21, (AP): For many younger
moviegoers, “Wonderstruck” will be their first Todd
Haynes film.
“Depends on what kind of parent you are,” Haynes
chucked while sitting in a shady rooftop corner of the
Cannes Film Festival’s hub, the Palais.
The director’s other options aren’t quite kid-friendly. There was his transgressive cinema landmark
“Poison” and his portrait of toxic suburbia “Safe.”
The ’70s glam rock drama “Velvet Goldmine” might
catch a young one’s attention, but its surreal excesses
certainly aren’t PG. And then there’s his remarkable
string of period melodramas: “Far From Heaven,”
the miniseries “Mildred Pierce” and his last film, the
sumptuous, Oscar-nominated
romance “Carol.”
While “Wonderstruck” is
chalk-full of Haynes’ touch,
it’s an undeniable left-hand
turn. It’s based on Brian Zelnick’s colorful young-adult
book, which tells parallel stories of two runaway 12-yearolds, 50 years apart, who have
fled their homes for New York.
The 1927 section features a
deaf girl (newcomer Millicent
Haynes
Simmonds) seeking her mother; the 1977 half follows an orphaned boy (Oakes Fegley) from the Midwest.
His post-premiere party, Haynes said, was atypical for Cannes. His young cast members hit the dance
floor with abandon, even busting their moves atop tables.
“They were outrageous and adorable,” said Haynes.
AP: Is it thrilling to make a film that will reach
younger moviegoers you haven’t before?
Haynes: “That was really the motivation for wanting to do it. And to maintain an almost stubborn respect for the ability of kids to deal with something
this unique and strange and one-of-a-kind that also
unabashedly looks back in time, and that really honors
the complexity, the peculiarity, the uniqueness of their
experience. And it does this kind of lovely paralleling
with the theme of deafness, which I think speaks to a
universal understanding that kids get — that they have
limited abilities and they understand limits of perception and mobility and freedom.
“The movie “The Miracle Worker” was a favorite
of mine when I was a kid. That movie is also very
much about language and understanding what language means and how that frees us or connects us back
to the world. It made a very deep connection with me.”
AP: How were you even open to a project like this?
Haynes: “I like a maybe broader range of movies
than people might expect. I didn’t really know Brian’s
books that well before. I don’t have kids, but kids are
all around me and my life. I have nephews I adore,
and kids of friends. But this wasn’t really on my radar
but it came to me through Sandy Powell who became
close to Brian Selznick after “Hugo.” She was the one
who said, “I think this is a Todd Haynes movie.”
“It was just so sweet and unexpected to get the script.
When I started to look at the script and I saw how much
of a cinematic take he had brought to the structuring of
it so that it was really an editorial experience. It spoke to
me and it spoke to the cineaste in me.”
AP: It’s quite a cinematic feast. There’s blackand-white, vibrant ‘70s color, long periods without
dialogue, a dream sequence and a striking section told
with miniatures that recalls the dolls of your “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story.”
Haynes: “It’s a film that really asks for that. I used all
the tools in my toolbox and I used all the personnel and
the creative partnerships in my family of filmmaking.
“This movie, because of its theme of deafness,
because of the silent film aspect, functions without
dialogue for so much of the film that it’s a purely cinematic experience. And it calls on a visual storytelling — certainly music and production design. I knew
that I could immerse in the production and collect all
the material, but I knew it was ultimately going to be
about how we cut the movie.”
AP: What strikes me about you is how you fuse
both formal, conceptual challenges with heart and
emotion. You seem both academic and romantic.
Haynes: “I think cinema is that. To not consider
both sides of that — in some of our most meaning
movies that have affected all our lives — is to not see
the whole picture. Ideas, references, languages but
also emotions are always so intricately meshed.”
Also:
CANNES, France: Actress Isabelle Huppert took
on a string of taboos in the Oscar-nomination raperevenge thriller “Elle”. Now she wants to push another
boundary.
“I would love to play a man. For an actress that’s
the ultimate challenge,” the French star who admits to
“reading a lot of the Marquis de Sade at the moment”,
told a talk at the Cannes film festival Friday.
Huppert, who made her name playing icy murderers, sado-masochists and abortionists, has teamed up
for a third time with Michael Haneke for “Happy
End”, which is the running for the festival’s top prize.
The Austrian’s fierce take on the refugee crisis,
which premieres Monday, is about a wealthy family who live near Calais in northern France, where
thousands of migrants camped waiting for a chance to
cross the Channel to Britain.
Huppert, 64, said she had no regrets about taking
roles that sometimes made audiences squirm.
❑
❑
❑
CANNES, France: A Syrian refugee is gunned down
by border police but instead of dying he finds he can
fly, in “Jupiter’s Moon”, a film about the European
migration crisis that baffled audiences at the Cannes
Film Festival.
Director Kornel Mundruczo, from Hungary
which has taken a particularly hard line on immigration, called it a “provokingly political movie” but also
“happily playful”.
“It’s definitely not a movie which you can put into
a box easily - you need time after the movie to find
your own answers,” Mundruczo told a news conference on Friday.
In competition for the Palme d’Or, the film’s title
refers to one of the moons orbiting Jupiter that, it is
speculated, may harbour life. The moon is called Europa — Europe — the place millions of migrants are
trying to reach.
“Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a satire on anti-refugee paranoia? Is it a religiose parable of guilt and
redemption? Is it a Euro-arthouse superhero origin
myth?” wrote The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw, eventually settling on calling “Jupiter’s Moon” a “messily
ambitious and over-extended movie with some great
images”.
French electronic musician Jean-Michel Jarre performs at Radio City Music Hall as part of his first-ever tour of North America, on May 20, in New York City. (AFP)
Film
Japanese indies thrive on the country’s big screens
‘Star Wars’ at 40: Force still strong
Annette Bening arrives at the Center
Theatre Group 50th Anniversary
event on May 20, in Los Angeles. (AP)
Styles
Cornell
Variety
LOS ANGELES: Harry Styles’ self-titled,
debut solo album is looking at a monster
first week showing, with consumption
trending at more than 230,000 albums and
a projected No. 1 debut on the Billboard
200 chart, say sources. Columbia Records
tallies projections according to traditional
sales, track equivalent albums, and streaming metrics. Final numbers are expected to
be revealed on May 21.
The well-received first studio effort
by the former One Direction frontman
follows an equally strong out-the-gate
showing the previous week by Logic. The
hip-hop artist logged 247,000 equivalent album units, according to his label, Def Jam
Records, of which 115,000 were physical
and downloaded albums bought directly
through Logic’s website.
Styles’ first week also outpaces former
bandmate Zayn Malik, whose “Mind of
Mine” album, released March 25, moved
157,000 equivalent album units, according
to Nielsen Music as cited by Billboard. An
insider tells Variety the total moved todate of “Mind of Mine” has not surpassed
Style’s opening week tally of 230,000-plus.
Although Zayn, to be fair, has released
a pair of top-two-charting singles —
“Pillowtalk” and “I Don’t Wanna Live
Forever,” the latter off the “Fifty Shades
Darker” soundtrack and featuring Taylor
Swift. Styles’ lead single “Sign of the
Times” peaked at No. 4 as of April 29. Of
course, all of the above adds up to a win for
Sony Music, the parent company of both
Columbia and RCA. (RTRS)
❑
❑
❑
LOS ANGELES, May 21, (Agencies):
The date was 1977, and no one had
yet worn a copper bikini to bed, made
“whooshing” lightsaber noises with a
broomstick or yelled “May the Fourth
be with you” at strangers.
But that was all about to change as
a 33-year-old Californian filmmaker
named George Walton Lucas Jr. prepared to release his third feature — a
far-fetched, slightly corny intergalactic
saga of good and evil starring a sulky
farm boy with daddy issues.
Jump forward 40 years and “Star
Wars” has grown into the most lucrative and influential movie franchise of
all time — Princess Leia’s signature
side hair buns are all the rage on Halloween and Jedi is an official religion
in several countries.
“I’m running out of hyperbolic adjectives to describe the power of ‘Star
Wars,’ but that’s because it is the ultimate standard-bearer,” Shawn Robbins, chief analyst for BoxOffice.com,
told AFP.
“Four decades of record-breaking,
genre-defining entertainment across
film, television, video games, toys,
books and everything else the brand
has touched simply speaks for itself.”
With its indie flick budget of just
$11 million, the brash-looking “Star
Wars” opened on Wednesday, May
25, 1977 — the anniversary falls on
Thursday — on an inauspicious 32
screens, taking in $1.6 million on its
first weekend.
Starring relative newcomers Mark
Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison
Ford as swashbuckling Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Han Solo, it benefited from word-of-mouth buzz and
the crowds lining up to see it quickly
grew exponentially.
Its first theatrical run ended with
a phenomenal $221.3 million while
various reissues by 20th Century Fox
brought the domestic total to more
than twice that amount.
The premiere was at the Chinese
Theatre in Hollywood, where it played
to sold-out audiences five times a day
for over a year, according to resident
historian Levi Tinker, who told AFP
the crowds literally wore out the handwoven Chinese carpet in the lobby.
Two sequels — “The Empire Strikes
Back” (1980) and “Return of the Jedi”
(1983) — grossed more than $450 million each worldwide, but there were
sizeable bumps in the road ahead.
Lucas’s 1997 “special edition” reoutside the Fox Theatre where Cornell performed Wednesday night with his group,
Soundgarden.
He was pronounced dead early Thursday
morning after being found unresponsive in
issues were met with jeers thanks to
digital tweaks deemed unnecessary or
downright off-putting.
Then there was the Lucas-directed
1999-2005 prequel trilogy beginning
with “The Phantom Menace” — films
considered sub-par in almost every department.
The 73-year-old filmmaker — who
had struck a deal with Fox to keep 40
percent of the gross from the original
movie, as well as merchandising and
sequels rights — was just as shrewd
when he sold LucasFilm to Disney in
2012 for a staggering $4 billion.
The Mouse House breathed new life
into “Star Wars” with the announcement of a sequel trilogy and three
standalone “anthology” films, and has
already added $3 billion with its first
two movies to bring the total box office
past $7.5 billion.
Speculation is already building over
the future of the franchise with the approach of the final movies by 2020 but,
long before then, fans have Rian Johnson’s “The Last Jedi” — the second
of the sequels — to look forward to in
December.
It continues seamlessly from “The
Force Awakens” (2015), which became one of three films in history to
take $2 billion after posting the biggest
domestic and worldwide debuts ever.
“‘The Last Jedi’ now has the potential to challenge those numbers and
— particularly given the goodwill generated by ‘The Force Awakens’ and
‘Rogue One’ — it is set up to be an
absolute monster,” said Paul Dergarabedian, a senior analyst at comScore.
Jeff Bock, of Exhibitor Relations,
believes the untimely death of Fisher
in December will give “The Last Jedi”
the same boost experienced by “Fast
and Furious 7” and “The Dark Knight
Rises” after the deaths of Paul Walker
and Heath Ledger.
In any case, experts agree that LucasFilm is unlikely to want to let go of
a franchise which can add $1-2 billion
with each new release, even if fan fatigue is an ever-present threat.
“Like the universe itself, Star Wars
will just keep expanding into the infinite,” said Bock.
“Literally, there is no end in sight
for this franchise.”
Also:
LOS ANGELES: The Japanese indie
sector would seem to be thriving, if
numbers are the sole criterion. Last
his Detroit hotel room.
The Wayne County medical examiner’s
office said the 52-year-old Cornell hanged
himself. A full autopsy and results of toxicology tests are pending.
VILNIUS: From folk singers to an all-robot
rock band, hundreds of Lithuanian music
lovers flocked streets and squares Saturday
to celebrate Street Music Day in dozens of
cities and towns nationwide.
The Baltic state of three million people has
hosted the festival since 2007, also attracting
followers in other European countries.
On the hottest day of the year, the robot
band played at a square in Vilnius, one of
more than 100 spots hosting concerts by
professional and amateur musicians, and
proved particularly popular with children.
“Robots are still quite rarely used in art,”
said Povilas Zmejauskas, 24, explaining
the idea behind the band, which played
rock and pop music.
There was also classical music, alternative rock, electronic dance music and jazz.
Andrius Mamontovas, a Lithuanian
musician and actor involved in organising the event said some cities in Ukraine,
Georgia, Latvia and Russia had also
joined the street music initiative. (AFP)
❑
❑
❑
DETROIT: Fans have gathered at a Detroit
concert venue to remember singer Chris
Cornell.
A candlelight vigil was held Friday night
Gaming, comic and movie fans take part in Comic Com Colombia 2017 in Medellin, on May 20. The 5th edition of Comic Com Colombia brings together fans
and entrepreneurs from the entertainment and gaming industry from May 18 to
21. (AFP)
year, 610 domestic films were released, according to figures compiled
by the Motion Picture Producers Assn
of Japan. By far the majority were indie films shown in only a scattering of
venues across the country. But at least
they had theatrical releases, which is
not the case in many developed-world
markets where Hollywood and local
commercial product rule, pushing indies to the margins.
Tokyo-based producer, distributor
and sales agent Adam Torel, whose
credits include the 2016 indie hit
“Lowlife Love” — a no-holds-barred
comic look at the lower reaches of the
Japanese film business — calls Japan a
paradise for indie filmmakers.
“In the UK it’s almost impossible
for even mid-budget indie films to get
a theatrical release due to the current
lack of theatrical holdbacks (whether
geographical or for windowing),” says
Torel, whose Third Window Films
DVD label has a UK presence.
“In Japan, there are still proper
holdbacks, which allow for strong
theatrical releases, plus VOD and Netflix have not worked well here so the
video-rental market is also incredibly
strong.”
Yet another factor working in indies’ favor, adds Torel, are the many
“mini theaters” (arthouses) in Tokyo
and elsewhere showing indie films, frequently to packed houses. “This allows
for even $5,000-budget student films to
get shown not just once or twice, but for
weeks in cinemas,” he says.
Torel should know: “Lowlife Love”
played for months around the country
following its April 2016 bow with director Eiji Uchida and the film’s stars
often in attendance at screenings.
One factor in the indie surge — at
the beginning of the decade only 408
local films were released — is the
emergence of crowdfunding. Once derided by some in the industry as a sort
of glorified begging for otherwise unsalable projects, crowdfunding is now
central to many Japanese filmmakers’
production and promotion strategies.
The best-known recent example is
Sunao Katabuchi’s “In This Corner
of the World,” a feature animation
about a young woman coming of age
in prewar Hiroshima and wartime
Kure, a nearby port, based on a comic
by a Hiroshima native Fumiyo Kouno. Katabuchi struggled for years to
get the film made, with potential backers rejecting it as uncommercial.
Cornell’s wife has said he may have
taken more of an anti-anxiety drug than he
was prescribed.
During Friday night’s vigil, some musicians and fans sang songs made popular by
Cornell.
Fan Julie Webber of Grosse Pointe
Farms lit candles and said “his music will
always be alive.” (AP)
❑
❑
❑
LOS ANGELES: IM Global has inked a raft
of deals for “Unabomb,” selling the Viggo
Mortensen manhunt movie to distributors
across Europe.
The film has landed with Eagle (Italy),
Metropolitan (France), Odeon (Greece),
Splendid (Benelux), Scanbox (Scandinavia), Tobis (Germany), TriPictures
(Spain) and Salim Ramia (Middle East).
“It has a high-caliber studio, director
and producer, and Viggo Mortensen is an
Academy Award nominee and an actor at
the top of his game, with unerring good
taste across his previous projects,” IM
Global CEO Stuart Ford told Variety. “It
also has a brilliant, fast, twist-laden plot,
and distributors have responded to all of
these elements.”
IM Global is fully financing the feature,
which it launched at the Cannes Film
Festival. Mortensen plays an FBI agent on
the trail of the titular fugitive. His unconventional team of agents track the wanted
criminal who they dubbed the Unabomber,
traveling across the US and building a picture of the anarcho-terrorist as his attacks
become increasingly deadly. (RTRS)